#dragon age 4

[felassan]

BioWare on Twitter: "Just like a fine wine, Varric only gets better with age. 👌 #DragonAge #TheMissing"

you could say that he has been..

dragon aging

[halfwayriight]

Sneak peek at the world of Dragon Age: Dreadwolf

[dyscomancer]

i have zero faith in dragon age 4 being worth a shit now. how do you let such phenomenal talent go to waste like this? what the fuck is happening behind closed doors at bioware?

[alinamgh]

Dorian, Fenris and Zevran (well, mostly Dorian and Zev) discussing over the aesthetic of Antivan rugs while their paramours are planning to save the world (again!)

[shay-does-art-things]

anyone else battling demons about the latest scraps bioware has given us?

[julsera]

Thus I freed the elven people and,

in so doing,

destroyed their world.

[theharlotofferelden]

Gonna need to put Mary Kirby + other long time staff being fired into perspective because this isn't a recent development. Bioware has been plagued with issues for well over a decade, and it's not just because of EA.

When Gaider decided to move on from Dragon Age in 2014, everyone thought it was just because he wanted to move onto a different project. He ended up leaving the company completely in 2016 after working on Anthem for a bit, and it was later reported that staff on the project had issues with his writing. He didn't mention why he left Bioware until very recently in a long twitter thread detailing that, while Bioware is a company known for its storytelling and characters, upper management went from valuing its writers to quietly resenting them, and feeling as though the writing were "holding the company back."

When they started working with Frostbite they encountered so many technical problems with it because it was specifically designed for FPS games. They were literally designing the tools they needed to work on both Dragon Age Inquisition and Mass Effect Andromeda while they were working on those games. Darrah (or perhaps Laidlaw, I forget which) even acknowledged when he was interviewed by Jason Schreier for Blood, Sweat, and Pixels, that this is a big industry no-no. But Bioware was put in a hard spot to either work with Frostbite or use the Eclipse engine that DAO was designed on (which I'm assuming would've required developing the engine and toolkit further to bring the graphics up to industry standards). So they ended up working with Frostbite which resulted in a fuckton of issues both for Dragon Age Inquisition and Mass Effect Andromeda, because the teams behind both projects had to design their own tools.

With the added stress of the toolkit also came the toxic work environment, departments that were perpetually understaffed, directors leaving and new writers coming in with different visions for the project, time mismanagement where they spent too much time on "high concept" gameplay, not having a clear vision for the game, resentments between studios, inexperience with coordinating video calls across multiple studios, the resultant mandatory crunch, etc. All of this is mentioned in this article about Mass Effect Andromeda's production cycle and this article about Anthem's.

Casey Hudson and Gérard Lehiany left Bioware in 2014 right in the middle of production on Andromeda (Casey rejoined the company as general manager in 2017, but left again in 2020). David Gaider left in 2016 in the middle of production on Anthem, as did Aaryn Flynn who left before the game was shipped in 2019. Mike Laidlaw left in 2017 and left production of Dragon Age Dreadwolf in Mark Darrah's hands, who left in the middle of its production in 2020. Matt Goldman (creative director for Dreadwolf) left the following year. Mac Walters (production director on Dreadwolf) who's been with the company for over 19 years left in January of this year. Are you seeing the pattern here?

I don't doubt that EA has influence over Bioware considering the recent layoffs appear related to the announcement back in March that EA would lay off 6% of its workforce. But it's clear there's something deeper that's going on at Bioware, and it's really not good.

When veteran senior staff are leaving one by one along with other long time staff, and it's been reported that the studio has a toxic work environment with management issues that make crunch necessary, there is something deeply wrong with the company and how things are being run. This is a sinking ship, and in all likelihood everyone is betting on keeping the company afloat with the success of Dragon Age Dreadwolf and/or the next Mass Effects game.

I want to say something more about how broadly the mainstream AAA video games industry is abusive and how incredibly fucked up their practices of layoffs have been normalized, but this is already pretty long. What I will say is that I'm not claiming this means DA4 or the next ME game is going to tank. It sure as fuck doesn't look good for it, but despite my grievances with Dragon Age, I do want the game to be successful and for Bioware to keep doing what they're doing.

And honestly, whether those games do well or not is really besides the point. Something is wrong at Bioware, whether it's the company itself or the fact it's owned by EA, and it can't be solved with mass layoffs. This is a cultural problem within the company itself, and it's very unlikely to be addressed considering how MEA failing seems to have done little to change how things are being run right now.

[bane-of-thedas]

they really did release a trailer to inform that half a year from now they'll release another trailer

[kamvna]

✧ Knight-Commander Meredith

[galedekarios]

I knew him as Solas, a thoughtful mage obsessed with dreams. But long ago, he had a different name. Fen’Harel, the Dread Wolf.

Dragon Age: Dreadwolf -- Who is the Dread Wolf?

[totallynotzzombiecat]

“In another world...”

Dragon Age: Inquisition 2016 portrait redraw

*ugly sobbing sounds with “lost elf theme” playing in the background* ;-;

[felassan]

ouugh i just cant wait to return to thedas

[exhausted-archivist]

Ah Treviso, great skyline.... What altitude are you at to have what looks like snow so low on the moutains? Aren't you near the coast? Ah, never mind.

Wait...

What is that? Those banners look...

Looks like Treviso is still occupied.

(My silliness is supplied to a bunch of mutuals and people in shared servers yelling about this for hours before I woke up lol)

[mogwaei]

Beloved storyteller

~

Greying Varric Tethras is everything

[elvish-root]

please just literally anything that’s not egg-shaped I am begging

[meetraart]

Drawing of Fenris to manifest some Dragon Age news 🙏